Nigeria: Confessions of a Pastor Who Smoked Cannabis for 15 Years

Calabar — How often do you meet a truly repented smoker? Perhaps not often! One strange thing is that many of those that claim to have repented from taking hard drugs or even cigarette are often unable to completely regain their health!

The major cause of insanity among young people today, some versed people and medical experts say, are traceable to the heavy consumption of Indian hemp and other hard drugs which reason government agencies are battling hard to tame.

Frank Ini claimed he was a chronic smoker of cannabis, cigarette and Indian hemp for 15 years and got fed up.

Despite his age which he said was 64, Ini who hails from Akwa Ibom State, looks bulky and fit.

Frank said he smoked cannabis, marijuana or Indian hemp for several years but there was no one who had the courage to confront him over it, not even his elders.

Having come out of chronic smoking and drinking, the grandfather and a pastor of a Deeper Life Bible Church branch in Calabar now wants to discourage young people from encountering what he passed through in life.

He expressed, “I want to share the terrible experiences I had as a marijuana smoker. I lived in Jos, Plateau State where I was a chronic smoker for 15 years. “That time in Jos, life was seemingly good and the peculiar weather there influenced me to smoke. I want to sincerely thank God that at that time I was intensely smoking I did not get mentally sick”.

Ini said police rather helped him to intensify his smoking habit instead of cautioning him. But it was the same police that nearly did him in!

He said, “To show you the extent of corruption in the country, at that time, I was a friend of one DPO [Divisional Police Officer].

“He had his office upstairs while we would stay downstairs and smoke because we would settle him at the end of the day. I was very lucky that I was not arrested by the same police officers.”

Frank said that he was apprehensive of the police though the DPO was his friend because of the “returns” they made to him. He said then, if any smoker was arrested with Indian hemp they risked being jailed for 10 years.